Curricular Development Archive

Lecture, May 3, 2013: BLC Fellows (E. Coyne, M. Vendetti, J. Shin, C. Byrnes)

By Orlando Garcia
Published May 04, 2013
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Filed in Curricular Development, Events, Lecture Series, BLC Fellowships

Spring 2013 BLC Fellows’ Instructional Development Research Projects Ethnic and National Minorities of the Russian Federation: A Diversity-Based Curriculum for the Intermediate Russian Classroom Erin Coyne, GSR, Slavic Languages and Literatures This presentation will focus on the creation of a diversity-based curriculum comprised of a series of 6 lesson plans designed to introduce intermediate students of Russian to the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Russian-speaking world,  →  Read in full

Learning Italian Through Television Advertising

By Marco Purpura
Published Mar 06, 2013
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships, Featured

Television advertising provides versatile authentic materials for learning Italian language and culture, as it constitutes a privileged point of entrance for analyses of Italian society through its rich network of cultural references – feature films, TV shows, songs, newspapers, magazines, as well as other advertisements. Further, the cross-cultural dimension of TV advertising prompts critical examination of the global circulation of national identities – for example, the role  →  Read in full

Using Film to Teach Cultural Analysis Skills in L2: A Pragmatic Guide

By Juan Caballero, GSR, Comparative Literature
Published Feb 07, 2013
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships, Featured

This presentation describes a semester-length sequence of lessons structured around closely-watched film clips for fourth-semester Spanish. Based on the implementation of these lessons this semester, and of an analogous application in Italian 4, straightforward guidelines will be presented for the design of sequences of lessons that guide students from a passive to a critical and analytic relation to film. These guidelines address issues both at the level of sequence design (spread  →  Read in full

Language through Culture: Developing an Integrative Curriculum for First-Year Czech

By Ellen Langer, Lecturer, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Published Feb 07, 2013
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships, Featured

Languages such as Czech, with complex grammatical marking and a vocabulary very different from English, are challenging to teach at the elementary level. My project starts from the premise that using a broad range of authentic cultural material, including excerpts from articles, ads, menus, film clips, and songs as the basis for grammatical exposition, drills, and classroom discussion improves both student learning and morale. My BLC project was to create a chapter of an online  →  Read in full

Language Teaching and Technology Seminar

By Mark Kaiser
Published Jan 28, 2013
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Filed in Curricular Development

Invitation to participate in BLC/ETS Language Teaching and Technology Seminar. The Berkeley Language Center and Educational Technology Services welcome your participation in their Spring 2013 seminar on using technology and new media for language teaching. Registration form: http://bit.ly/113fnuO The seminar will meet weekly on Thursdays from 3:30 - 5:00pm in Dwinelle 127, the active learning classroom. Additional open tech workshops will be held weekly on Fridays during the  →  Read in full

Your help, please: Survey for BLC-ETS seminar on technology and language teaching

By Dave Malinowski
Published Dec 12, 2012
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Filed in BLC News, Curricular Development

The Berkeley Language Center and Educational Technology Services are excited to announce that they will be partnering to offer a hands-on seminar on using technology and new media for language teaching in the Spring 2013 semester. The seminar will meet once weekly, with additional drop-in workshops scheduled throughout the term, and course materials made available via the BLC website. Detailed information about the curriculum and schedule will follow in a separate post in a few  →  Read in full

Introducing the Teachers’ Forum

By Mark Kaiser
Published Oct 29, 2012
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Filed in BLC News, Curricular Development, Research

CALL FOR PAPERS Since its establishment in 2009, L2 Journal has published a variety of quality research papers on different aspects of language learning and teaching, reaching a wide audience of interested scholars, educators, and students. The journal has also published several special issues on important topics in applied linguistics and second language acquisition. This Fall, we are proud to announce the introduction of a new section in the journal, Teachers’ Forum,  →  Read in full

Rearticulating culture in a place in-between: The multimodal experiences of hearing mothers

By Jennifer Johnson
Published Oct 04, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships

Culture has been commonly understood as something we “have”, acquired through membership in a community rather than something socio-ideologically situated that we “do” bodily in and through language. Through videotaped interviews with hearing mothers of deaf children discussing their language experiences in the visual world of their deaf child, I attempt to shape an emergent notion of culture as a site of struggle which includes multiple modes of communication via speech,  →  Read in full

Language and History through Silent Film in the Foreign Language Classroom

By Daniel Brooks
Published Sep 12, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships

Silent cinema represents a useful tool for foreign language instruction precisely because of its lack of verbalized dialogue. Cinematic silence can be used to demonstrate the connections between visual and verbal meaning, provide unique material for a variety of writing projects and in-class exercises, and facilitate discussion about the function of language in genre and narrative. If properly contextualized within a comparative framework, silent films and other historical  →  Read in full

Every Object Tells a Story: Searching for Finnishness among Bay Area Finns

By Sirpa Tuomainen
Published Aug 30, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships

Immigrant homes often display artifacts of cultural, historic, and ethnic importance. I have looked into the meaningful objects that Bay Area Finns of different generations and age groups hold dear to their hearts. The owners find nostalgic connections with these objects as they keep negotiating and recreating their Finnishness. This talk discusses the many fragilities found: the fragility of the objects themselves, of their nostalgic connections, of the objects’ true ethnic  →  Read in full

The Parrot’s Two Feet: Teaching French in Contact with Arabic

By Jonathan Haddad
Published Aug 16, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Media, Research, BLC Fellowships

How can the language classroom account for the ecologies of language that generate bilingual and multilingual practices, attitudes, and cultural products? Using texts and media that incorporate French and Arabic, this project develops lesson plans to engage students in the critical appraisal of the values, agencies, and registers that shape language use in francophone cultures.  Download article as PDF

Lecture, February 17, 2012: Mark Kaiser, Rossella Carbotti

By Orlando Garcia
Published Feb 18, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Events, Lecture Series, Media

Language in Film and the Language of Film: Two Semiotic Systems Engaged by Mark Kaiser and Rossella Carbotti, University of California, Berkeley This presentation addresses the use of film clips in the foreign language classroom. Our main focus will be on film as text and how language use in film works in tandem with cinematic devices to create meaning. We will provide a number of examples from a variety of languages (Italian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic), and provide a framework  →  Read in full

Third Place in the French classroom: A separate space for a new beginning?

By Letizia Allais
Published Jan 15, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Newsletter Articles, Research, BLC Fellowships

As someone who is Italian, was raised in France, and has lived in the U.S. for ten years, and as the new mother of an American-born baby, I am fascinated by topics that explore the sometimes multiple identity crises that multilingual individuals face. What does it mean to be multilingual? What effect does it have on one’s sense of self? On one’s relationship with others? What is a mother tongue? Where does it start? Where does it end? These are all questions that spark debates  →  Read in full

Teaching Intertextuality and Recontextualization through Music

By Maya Smith
Published Jan 15, 2012
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Filed in Curricular Development, Events, Media, Newsletter Articles, Research, BLC Fellowships

Sensing the opportunity to provide a pedagogical model for the use of music in foreign language teaching, I have created activities that uncover and highlight themes of intertextuality, recontextualization, recognizability, and (re)appropriation through close readings of songs and other cultural texts to which they are linked. My activities are designed to show students how texts shed light on ideological, cultural, and symbolic systems. In order to give instructors access to these  →  Read in full

L2 Journal Special Issue now available

By Mark Kaiser
Published Nov 01, 2011
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Filed in BLC News, Curricular Development, Media, Research

The special issue of L2 Journal, “Teaching Language, Culture, and Text with Film” is now available here. Contents: “Teaching Japanese Pragmatic Competence Using Film Clips” by Wakae Kambara. “The Five C’s: Bringing a 1980’s Film into the 21st Century Chinese Language Learning Context” by Gloria Bien. “Rebels with a Cause: (Re)defining Identities and Culture in Contemporary French Cinema” by Sebastien Dubreil. “Teaching Chinese Cultural Perspectives through Film” by Lihua  →  Read in full

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